TORONTO — What a fine line the Toronto Raptors have walked this season, and how successfully.
How much longer they can, or will need to, is the question.
Witness their opponents Tuesday night.
For years the Portland Trail Blazers were thought to be the Raptors’ counterpart in the Western Conference. It was deemed a compliment and translated to: stable, competitive, consistent.
Each club has made six straight playoff appearances with the Blazers advancing to the Western Conference Finals last year and the Raptors winning their first NBA title.
But consistent competence — let alone excellence — is a difficult standard to maintain in the NBA.
Stuff happens, basically.
As an example, when the two teams met at Scotiabank Arena they were tied in the most unlikely and unwelcome category: each club had missed 128 man games to injuries, third-most in the league.
From the Raptors’ point of view, that might not have even been the most significant numerical oddity.
“I think the stat of the night is this: We started five completely different guys in Portland when we beat ’em out there,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse, referring to the win his club stole in Portland in early November when they were down three starters. “I don’t know if you can do that in a two-month span very often.”
This time around, the Raptors were down three different starters – Marc Gasol (hamstring); Pascal Siakam (groin); and the freshly injured Fred VanVleet (hamstring), as well as their top bench scorer, Norman Powell (shoulder) – against the Blazers. The first time it was Kyle Lowry, Serge Ibaka and OG Anunoby.
While it’s believed Powell could be back any day, the news on VanVleet was more vague and so – we’ve become programmed to assume – more foreboding.
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“He’s out,” said Nurse. “Think it’s gonna be a little bit before we know exactly how long.”
And yet? The Raptors have generally found a way.
They couldn’t this time around. Missing three starters and four of your top seven players is a burden almost no NBA team can weather game after game. The Raptors’ ability to make do with made-up lineups has been the exception to the rule, but as their 101-99 heartbreaker to the Blazers suggested, rules exist for a reason.
“We’ve got great guys, young kids going out there and trying to prove their worth,” said Lowry. “(We) go out there and execute and play. We’ve just got to continue to get better. Hopefully, these guys get healthy and get out there.
“(But) we’ve just got to play with what we have.”
The difficulty of what the Raptors were trying to do became clear down the stretch of the fourth as the Blazers were able to look to Damian Lillard – a borderline MVP candidate – and Carmelo Anthony, a 10-time all-star with a new lease on life on offence. Toronto had Lowry and not much else.
Each of the Blazers stars hit two threes late to dismantle what had been a 10-point, fourth-quarter lead. A Lillard bomb from 30 feet tied the game with 38.5 seconds to play — a shot Toronto contends was triggered by an illegal screen set by Hassan Whiteside — and the Raptors couldn’t generate any offence against a Blazers defence anchored by the paint presence of the big man, who finished with 16 rebounds and seven blocks.
Toronto’s best chance to break the tie ended in a turnover with 13 seconds left when Lowry and Patrick McCaw got their signals crossed on an inbound play. Then Anthony hit a pull-up jumper from the free-throw line with 3.3 seconds left to put the Blazers up for good. A desperate three-point attempt by Lowry rimmed out — “I thought it was going in,” he said — and the Raptors fell to 24-13 on the year as they head to Charlotte on the second night of the back-to-back. For Portland (16-22), it was just its second win in eight games as it tries to remain in the hunt for the eighth seed in the West.
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Lowry led Toronto with 24 points on 7-of-23 shooting, while Ibaka had 17. Chris Boucher and Oshae Brissett each chipped in 12, but it was pretty slim after that as the Raptors shot just 36.5 per cent from the floor. Portland got loose in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Raptors 32-21, and Anthony finished with 28 — 10 in the fourth — while Lillard had 11 of his 20 in the final period.
The Trail Blazers are the more typical version of what happens around the NBA when injuries pile up with no end in sight. With two starters – Rodney Hood and Zach Collins – out for the season and another key rotation piece, Jusuf Nurkic, having not played yet this year, there is no question they have been up against it.
Portland has done its best to stop the bleeding. Knowing it was going to be without Nurkic for much of the year after he broke his leg late last season, it added Whiteside in the off-season. The Blazers even decided to bring Anthony back from a 12-month basketball exile and have watched the 35-year-old become their third-leading scorer.
Yet they came into the game Tuesday struggling to keep their season from slipping away on them.
That’s what’s supposed to happen.
The Raptors are what’s not supposed to happen. This many injuries to this many key players stretched out over two months is supposed to send a team spinning sideways, ever closer to the abyss.
The Raptors keep chugging along. They are now 5-4 without Gasol, Powell and Siakam. The last time they played Portland, they were in the midst of an 8-2 run without Lowry and Ibaka.
“I just want us to go out there and play with an honest effort,” said Nurse. “I think through those nine games, I’d say probably seven of them we have … to me, that’s all I want to do. I want to go out and let you know we’re guarding you, that we’re trying to take away things you like, and that we’re doing our best for the offence to go in the direction it needs, to go through the right people, and then have some other guys chip in. Then I can live with that.”
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Other guys have been chipping in.
As an example, for the last 3:10 of the first quarter Nurse relied on the following lineup in an NBA game: Thomas (undrafted free-agent rookie, playing in his first NBA game in six weeks); Boucher (undrafted free agent in his second season); Brissett (undrafted rookie free agent, playing in his 11th NBA game); McCaw (undrafted free agent with 172 games’ experience) and Stanley Johnson (a busted former lottery pick on his third team in two seasons who has played just 11 games this season).
It is not an NBA lineup, by any conventional measure, yet the rag-tag group finished the quarter on an 8-0 run. Their most reliable offensive play was tipping the ball to themselves to gain an extra disjointed possession. Hey, whatever works. The Raptors took a 24-15 lead into the second period.
By that time, Lowry had gotten enough rest and picked up from there. As long as he doesn’t crumble under the load – Lowry is leading the NBA in minutes per game, averaging 38 per night – the husky point guard will be a lock for his sixth-straight all-star appearance. The 33-year-old Lowry hit a three and a floater in quick order and the Raptors were up by 12 early in the second quarter.
Incredibly, they were able to hold some version of their advantage for most of the period. The Raptors led 56-46 at half. Heading into the fourth, they led 78-69.
The highwater mark came with Lowry and Ibaka on the bench early in the fourth as Boucher scored 10 quick points to keep the Raptors’ lead in double figures.
But things got glitchy down the stretch. The Trail Blazers tightened up defensively and were able to focus more attention on Lowry. In the final 3:57 minutes, the only offence the Raptors could manage was a mid-range pull-up by Lowry and a tough finish by Ibaka off a Lowry feed.
Even the short-handed Blazers had more options than that, and eventually that was the difference.
Still, it was almost another unlikely Raptors win. Even in defeat, it was the most recent example of the Raptors scratching, clawing and almost finding a way. The Trail Blazers are proof that it’s not something that should be taken for granted.
